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Distinctive features of gravitational-wave signals from black hole mergers could reveal the existence of long-sought ultralight bosons.

X-ray analysis reveals lattice distortions are behind silver gallium telluride’s thermoelectric properties, a finding that could advance green technologies.

A model attributes the propagating bands that appear in a compressed porous medium to structural changes alone.

Physicists have just taken an amazing step towards quantum devices that sound like something out of science fiction.

For the first time, isolated groups of particles behaving like bizarre states of matter known as time crystals have been linked into a single, evolving system that could be incredibly useful in quantum computing.

Following the first observation of the interaction between two time crystals, detailed in a paper two years ago, this is the next step towards potentially harnessing time crystals for practical purposes, such as quantum information processing.

When it is free in cold space, a molecule will spontaneously cool down by slowing its rotation and losing rotational energy in quantum transitions. Physicists have shown that this rotational cooling process can be accelerated, slowed down and even inverted by the molecule’s collisions with surrounding particles.

Researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany and the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory have recently carried out an experiment aimed at measuring the rate of quantum transitions caused by collisions between molecules and electrons. Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters, offer the first experimental evidence of this rate, which had previously only been theoretically estimated.

“When electrons and molecular ions are present in tenuous, ionized gases, the lowest quantum level populations of the molecules can be changed in a collision process,” Ábel Kálosi, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “One example of this process is in interstellar clouds, where observations reveal molecules predominantly in their lowest quantum states. The attractive force between the negatively charged electrons and the positively charged molecular ions makes the process of electronic collisions particularly efficient.”

While volcanic eruptions and earthquakes serve as immediate reminders that Earth’s interior is anything but peaceful, there are also other, more elusive, dynamic processes taking place deep down below our feet. Using information from ESA’s Swarm satellite mission, scientists have discovered a completely new type of magnetic wave that sweeps across the outermost part of Earth’s outer core every seven years. This fascinating finding, presented today at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium, opens a new window into a world we can never see.

Earth’s magnetic field is like a huge bubble protecting us from the onslaught of cosmic radiation and charged particles carried by powerful winds that escape the Sun’s gravitational pull and stream across the Solar System. Without our magnetic field, life as we know it could not exist.

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The experiment will investigate the Unruh effect, which is produced by a mixture of quantum mechanics and special relativity.

A completely new kind of molecule has been made by combining an extremely cold ion and a super-sized atom. The unusual molecular bond between the two particles was thousands of times longer than those in most room-temperature molecules, and the method to make and study it could kick-start a new branch of ultracold quantum chemistry.

Once the tiny, iron-based particles are added to the water, the lithium is drawn out of the water and binds to them. Then with the help of a magnet, the nanoparticles can be collected in just minutes with the lithium hitching a ride, no longer suspended in the liquid and ready for easy extraction. After the lithium is extracted, the recharged nanoparticles can be used again.

New approach uses magnetic nanoparticles to extract valuable rare earth elements from geothermal fluids.

Continue reading “Researchers ‘magically’ mining metals from water” »

The famous double-slit experiment–a now classic showcase of how both light and matter are able to behave as both waves, and particles in their “classical” physical definition–seems almost like magic to many of us.

Because of this unusual function of our physical universe, the double-slit experiment has intrigued physicists for decades, as it suggests the possibility of multiple universes or weird quantum events. However, only recently have researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) found a way to fully validate this experiment, using a particular measurement method on the particle.